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A Tech Dirt post directed attention to the Internet Archive's release of over 2,000 MS-DOS video games, playable in the browser. "What I found truly amazing was that with every excited Twitter or Facebook comment I saw, it was about a different game...Each person seemed to latch onto their own moment in history." But the "Internet Archive is allowed to do this kind of thing...because it was lucky enough to get one of the semi-arbitrary DMCA triennial review exemptions that lets them break old DRM for the purpose of archiving vintage software. But, even then, it's not entirely clear that what the Internet Archive is doing is fully protected today."

Slate interviewed Lacey Noonan, the author of a humor RPF story about a U.S. football player. She was asked, "You’ve also written a story that features an encounter between Flo from Progressive, Wendy from Wendy’s, and Jan from Toyota... Are you drawn to characters that aren’t typically seen as particularly sexual?" Noonan: "Definitely. I believe all three of those women are talented actors, but yeah ... not your normal fare. I think it's a writer's responsibility to throw light on the dark corners. It's also a kind of reaction to the blunt ubiquity of American culture. Like, if it's going to be in my face 24/7, then I'm going to have a reaction to it, and I should."

The Boston Globe later wrote about Noonan's book being pulled from Amazon for trademark violations. The reason was "the book jacket, specifically the photo of Gronkowski that features the 'MHK' patch on his uniform" though whether it was a demand by the National Football League or his team, the New England Patriots, wasn't clear.

Meanwhile the Patriots' opponents in the Superbowl were attempting a number of trademark grabs. "The Seahawks’ aggressive quest for new revenue has led both the NBA and the NHL to try to slow one of the trademark applications. And while Seattle’s owners were once sued over the use of '12th Man,' the team is now trying to seize control of many other variations of the term. In the process, the Seahawks organization has battled fans, local businesses and even a former player... 'They’ve always been a little aggressive about securing intellectual property for themselves,' said Andresen, who has worked with other professional franchises. 'They’ve really taken the position that the more intellectual property, the better.'"

Where have you seen fans standing up for their rights? Write about it in Fanlore! Contributions are welcome from all fans.

We want your suggestions! If you know of an essay, video, article, podcast, or link you think we should know about, comment on the most recent OTW Fannews post. Links are welcome in all languages! Submitting a link doesn't guarantee that it will be included in a Fannews post, and inclusion of a link doesn't mean that it is endorsed by the OTW.

GamaSutra presented a roundup of videogame criticism "on topics ranging from the 'ludocentrism' of games discourse to a different take on Eric Zimmerman's 'Ludic Century.'" The roundup of videogame blogging included a look at German gaming blogs, and a blog post by Maggie Greene that compares "Tales of Xillia to Chinese literary traditions. Specifically, she looks at multiple endings and the effort to capture both tragic compromise and fairy tale and fan-fiction happiness ever-after."

Hoodline wrote about a bookstore's book fanfiction with local authors. "We pick a book every month, either one that we just love and is classic, or is just in the zeitgeist for whatever reason, and we assign each writer a character—they don’t get to pick. And then they write 800-1200 words of fan fiction about that character, or heavily featuring them or centered around them. They can do anything they want. Whoever wins gets to come back. The structure of the show is that there are six readers total, and they’re all read by our 'thespian in residence,'...and the audience gets to vote."

At The Guardian, Katie Welsh posted about the best vlog reinventions of classic books. "[F]resh-faced teens and twentysomethings aren’t only vlogging about their own lives; they’re dressing up as fictional characters and telling modern reworkings of familiar stories into their webcams as YouTube adaptations of classic novels go viral. The teams behind them may be professional actors or simply fans of the books, and the quality of both scripts and production can vary, but at their best they could give the BBC a run for its money."

The Otago Daily Times published a piece on cosplaying runners at Disney. "'I love the atmosphere,' said Lauren Harrell, 27, after she finished the November super heroes race in a hand-painted T-shirt and foam headpiece as Groot, the human-like tree in Disney's Marvel Studios film Guardians of the Galaxy. 'People are cheering you every step of the way. And nobody judges you for dressing in costume,' said Harrell, who had a speaker attached to her waist so she could dance and sing to the Guardians soundtrack." Other half marathons include Disney Princess or Tinker Bell themes.

How far and wide have you seen fandom activities? Write about them in Fanlore! Contributions are welcome from all fans.

We want your suggestions! If you know of an essay, video, article, podcast, or link you think we should know about, comment on the most recent OTW Fannews post. Links are welcome in all languages! Submitting a link doesn't guarantee that it will be included in a Fannews post, and inclusion of a link doesn't mean that it is endorsed by the OTW.

At Bustle Emma Lord explained why Everyone Should Date Someone Who is Into Fanfiction. "I learned something about fanfiction: It isn’t a hindrance to me being in a relationship at all. In fact, it has become a whole new facet of myself that I finally got the opportunity to share with someone, and I was surprised once I found someone who was curious about it that I had a lot to say. I would argue that in general, being a rampant fanfiction junkie makes you even more desirable in a relationship, because we have so much to bring to the table."

Sadly, fans can't always count on one another for acceptance. In two separate cases a fan video maker and a sports fan were both bullied or criticized by their fellow fans to the point that they took their lives.

In other cases, stereotypes come from the media. AndPop profiled fangirls who met celebrities as if fans in their 20s are a rarity, asking "[W]hat’s it like when your interest carries over, even when you’re now a responsible and employed adult in your late 20s?" One fan pointed out that it was like any other hobby. "'I do it a lot and I go to a lot of shows, but I’m not taking off for six weeks to follow a band around the country,' Bove explains. 'To me, it’s no different than a sports team or anything like that. If somebody wants to go to every Leafs game because they have season tickets, then they go and have fun.'”

The Longmont Colorado Times Call profiled the Grey Havens Young Adults fan group. "The group started in October 2013 and gradually gained ground. While they are technically a book discussion group, Bosica and Cowling make a point of not limiting the conversations to the novel at hand, spawning philosophical discussion of fandoms that reach across the worlds of television, cinema, comic books, card games, tabletop games and literature." Some of the participants pointed out the strengths of the group. "'We get into deep philosophical conversations about what is good and what is bad,' said Xan Brown...Peter Larsen, 12, said that sort of deep discussion doesn't happen often in school."

How have you seen fannishness and fandom being accepted? Write about it in Fanlore! Contributions are welcome from all fans.

We want your suggestions! If you know of an essay, video, article, podcast, or link you think we should know about, comment on the most recent OTW Fannews post. Links are welcome in all languages! Submitting a link doesn't guarantee that it will be included in a Fannews post, and inclusion of a link doesn't mean that it is endorsed by the OTW.

MacWorld discussed Fancred, a new effort at a social networking site for sports fans. "The sports fan-focused social network is quietly building momentum in a quest to do for sports what LinkedIn has done for professionals. 'We think we’re building the world’s largest fan network,' said CEO Kash Razzaghi." Their strategy involves turning fans into marketing pros. "[T]he platform is also targeting college campuses in a strategy that cribs liberally from the playbook of popular messaging apps. Fancred offers college internships to students who want to be the app’s brand ambassadors... Gaining users on campus will translate to professional growth."

Some other sites are cribbing more than fans' time for their projects. Rocket News 24 pointed out how a Nintendo character montage included a fan's artwork. "With over 12 million members and billions of page views per day, Japanese art submission site Pixiv is submitted to by up-and-coming creatives the world over, making it one of the best places for people to showcase their work and get noticed. While few artists have a problem with their work being featured or embedded on other sites–indeed, with proper citation many are glad of the free publicity–Pixiv’s terms of use make it explicitly clear that users should not take or insert a featured artist’s work in another product without prior permission."

Meanwhile Fashion & Style speculated that the new Star Wars film would include a fan-created character. "Another name on the list is Captain Phasma, a character who, as SK points out, has only appeared in a fanfic called "Tarkin's Fist". Despite the limited information about the role, /Film, who picked up the story earlier this week, speculates that Gwendoline Christie is a strong contender for the part."

The Hollywood Reporter discussed Paramount's use of Wattpad to promote the film Project Almanac. "Wattpad's 35 million users, read, write and engage with stories uploaded online, including a fair amount of fan fiction. The platform...is particularly popular among young women and previously partnered with films like Fox's The Fault in Our Stars, Universal's The Purge: Anarchy and Ouija and three Relativity titles: last year's Romeo and Juliet, Best of Me and Beyond the Lights... 'We have been watching Wattpad for quite some time and think it's a really exciting and new emerging online social destination, not only for young adult book fans to discover and share stories, but beyond that, it's becoming a kind of a hub and influencer-type community, and something that's been bubbling up in terms of social platforms,' Paramount's senior vp, interactive marketing Megan Wahtera tells THR."

How have you seen fans being used for commercial projects? Write about it in Fanlore! Contributions are welcome from all fans.

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Discussions about celebrity fandom have popped up on various sites, such as The Guardian's article about the lessons learned from allegations against Bill Cosby. "Before the internet, when the shroud of celebrity mystique was easier to maintain...fans felt less complicit in continuing to swoon over and patronize icons who were rumored to have done heinous things...But now, with bystanders always on hand to serve as amateur chroniclers and distributors of celebrity missteps and misdeeds, it’s hard to obscure or deny to fans what they’ve seen with their own eyes."

At SB Nation a similar discussion took place over social issues and sports fandom. "At times, hero worship of sports stars, or even teams as a whole, reaches a point where it can be described as something eerily similar to a cult of personality. That's a culture that can preclude educated opinions on and well-informed public discourse of serious issues involving said star or team. Examples of worst-case scenarios, like those at Steubenville and Penn State, which involve crimes that should still churn stomachs upon reflection, not only harbored such evil acts, but also led to their attempted cover-ups."

The Queen's University Journal explored why a connection with celebrities seems to exist. "Spitzberg co-authored an article and study titled 'Fanning the Flames of Fandom: Celebrity Worship, Parasocial Interaction, and Stalking'." In a 2001 study "[s]eventy-five per cent noted they’ve experienced 'strong attachments to more than one celebrity'...'[Parasocial interaction is] the idea that we develop relationships with people who we experience in the media, in much the same sort of way that we experience relationships with people in real life.'"

Fandom can be risky for many in more physical ways, whether for Russian women in football fandom or Chinese fans in slash fiction fandom. "'The law doesn’t differentiate between dan mei and gay fiction in any way,' says a 28-year-old writer who asked not to be identified by name. In his view, crackdowns are a function of political whims, 'so if the government decides it’s going to crack down on gay-related content, it’ll just cast a wide net and go for dan mei, too.'"

What aspects of fandom have troubled you? Write about them in Fanlore! Contributions are welcome from all fans.

We want your suggestions! If you know of an essay, video, article, podcast, or link you think we should know about, comment on the most recent OTW Fannews post. Links are welcome in all languages! Submitting a link doesn't guarantee that it will be included in a Fannews post, and inclusion of a link doesn't mean that it is endorsed by the OTW.

The University of Iowa libraries, which partner with the OTW's Open Doors project, have announced a major fanzine digitization project. "10,000 science fiction fanzines will be digitized from the James L. 'Rusty' Hevelin Collection, representing the entire history of science fiction as a popular genre and providing the content for a database that documents the development of science fiction fandom."

At Swarthmore College, Professor Bob Rehak talked fandom studies and his article in the OTW's academic journal, Transformative Works and Cultures. "It was fascinating to see fixtures of my own media passions, such as Star Trek props and the Batmobile, filtered through the contributors’ different theoretical approaches. This sense of rediscovering the familiar is characteristic, I think, of fan studies that deepen and complexify the apparent superficialities of popular culture...Twenty years of fan scholarship have done a great deal to concretize and personalize those relationships, but object-oriented studies now promise to move us even further from the reductive idea of the media fan as gullible consumer."

The Prince George Citizen interviewed researcher and author Andrei Markovits about the motivation of sports fans. "[W]hile female fandom is on the rise 'it's very clear it's a gendered world,' he said. 'The emotional investment for men is so much more, but the pain [when their team loses] is also so much more,' Markovits said. 'When I was a kid, every English soccer games started Saturday at 3 p.m. Why? Because the factory gates closed at 2 p.m.... and that gave them time to get to the game. For it to become part of the hegemonic sports culture, you have to have a large group of working-class men.' However, these sports do create a mixing place for people of different social classes within society."

At The Daily Dot Aja Romano wrote about the Harry Potter Alliance's equality campaign. "The newest HPA project, named after one of the Harry Potter series' most beloved characters, is designed to raise a new generation of fandom activists. The Granger Leadership Academy, named after Hermione Granger, is a leadership conference taking place this weekend (October 17–19) at Auburn University. The goal is to empower people to turn their fandom into real-world activism, something that HPA founder Andrew Slack found transformative in his own life."

Where research about fandom do you like to turn to? Write about it in Fanlore! Contributions are welcome from all fans.

We want your suggestions! If you know of an essay, video, article, podcast, or link you think we should know about, comment on the most recent OTW Fannews post. Links are welcome in all languages! Submitting a link doesn't guarantee that it will be included in a Fannews post, and inclusion of a link doesn't mean that it is endorsed by the OTW.

In a post for The Guardian, Erin Riley talks bout the ethics of sports fandom. "Ethical issues may be particularly acute in horse racing, but being a sport fan can regularly involve navigating an ethical minefield. For some fans, it’s the relationship between their particular code or club and gambling. For others, it’s the decisions made by the management of their team that don’t sit well with their values. It can be an appointment of a particular player, the sacking of a coach or the attempt to cover up a scandal. There are almost as many different responses to these issues as there are issues themselves. Fans are forced to figure out a way to respond that weighs the values they hold against the teams or sport they love."

On the flip side, at Hardwood Paroxysm, the discussion is about how fannishness changes over time. "It’s something for us to look forward too, a way to spend time with and connect to our friends and family, and generally just a way to remove ourselves from the real world for a certain number of hours a week. And part of why it’s so appealing, besides the reasons listed above, is that spectacle aspect of it. Here are these people that, through the genetic lottery (and hard work as well), are able to do things the vast majority of the human race could never dream of...Everyone wants to be tall and strong and in shape, because life is so much easier when you have those three things working for you."

The Baltimore Sun featured the century-plus appeal of Sherlock Holmes fandom. "Watson's Tin Box began in Ellicott City in 1989 and is considered a scion society of the Baker Street Irregulars. Its named recalls the box where Watson collected his reports of Sherlock's investigations." One of its founders, "Churchill put together the original collection of artifact boxes, one for each story, that recall details of the story. Some items are antiques, period pieces that reflect Sherlock's times: period checks, blank telegram forms or hotel bills. Other things are 'genuine faux originals.' If he couldn't find a letter or a ticket, he'd create it."

Scholar Lori Morimoto looked at more recent developments involving fandom memes and official production. "And it’s this cover that I find all but impossible to discuss through frameworks of appropriation and clearly defined fan-producer identities and relations. A cursory glance at Mizutama’s Twitter images demonstrates the meme’s affective appeal to her, and in this sense its inclusion in the official book cover art seems as much sly in-joke as appropriation. Indeed, the decentralized context of the book’s production – produced by the longtime publisher of both Arthur Conan Doyle works in Japanese and the long-running Hayakawa Mystery magazine, written by Holmes aficionado Kitahara, and illustrated by present-day Sherlock fan Mizutama – begs the questions of where we locate ‘production’, and how we might conceptualize ‘monetization’ here."

From fandom history to fandom passions, Fanlore is there for it all. Add your contributions!

We want your suggestions! If you know of an essay, video, article, podcast, or link you think we should know about, comment on the most recent OTW Fannews post. Links are welcome in all languages! Submitting a link doesn't guarantee that it will be included in a Fannews post, and inclusion of a link doesn't mean that it is endorsed by the OTW.

Lydia Laurenson wrote for The Atlantic about online anonymity, spurred by the change in Google+'s policy on real names. "I was finding myself on the Internet, but I was also learning skills that would be useful both as a professional and a human offline. My ability to be an effective creator was hugely shaped by writing popular fan fiction and running side-project businesses in virtual worlds. Researchers have also found pseudonymous games to be great environments for training leadership skills...Nowadays, we’re often told that The Future lies in entrepreneurship. I believe that elastic selfhood is crucial for people’s personal development, but it’s important for broader innovation, too. We need space to experiment and risk-tolerant environments where people can learn."

Many female fans have hidden their gender in online spaces for some of the reasons that Jen Mac Ramos describes as appearing in hockey fandom. "Plain and simple: being a hockey fan online isn't a safe space for women. In fact, it's downright frightening at times. It's no secret that hockey is notoriously a white bro sport, white as the ice they play on. The boys' club that watches and writes about it is what it is: a boys' club. It's men of all spades who get to dictate what the culture is like. While understandable on the ice (because, well, it is a boys' club in the locker room), why should it extend to how fandom should be? Why should it be around to isolate women?"

At Black Girl Nerds, Jamie Broadnax questioned terms and whether or not they can encompass an entire audience of fans. "A nerd can look like anyone. They look like you or me. However, for women and people of color, are we nerds or anti-nerds? I’m not suggesting we reject the term nerd because I like being called a nerd and I have no qualms about adopting all of what is considered to be a part of nerd culture. However, as a blerd, if I choose to embrace my blerdniess as opposed to generic nerdiness than what does that mean exactly? The blerd community is a place of solidarity for nerds of color. It’s a safe place where we are free to embrace and express our unique sense of self. There is a no-judgment zone within the blerd community and we welcome blerds to cosplay as non-Black characters and for women to have a prolific voice in our community."

What parts of fandom have you been involved in? Write about them in Fanlore! Contributions are welcome from all fans.

We want your suggestions! If you know of an essay, video, article, podcast, or link you think we should know about, comment on the most recent OTW Fannews post. Links are welcome in all languages! Submitting a link doesn't guarantee that it will be included in a Fannews post, and inclusion of a link doesn't mean that it is endorsed by the OTW.

It's not unusual to find media articles or online posts with dubious declarations about fanworks' legal status, but it's less common to find posts that reconsider the topic. One writer for Business2Community took advice from OTW Legal staffer Heidi Tandy to better explore relevant legal cases and events. "One of the hallmarks of fan fiction is that it must be non-commercial. Yet many of the sites have ads on them – so aren’t they commercial? Not necessarily, says Tandy. 'Since 2002, there’s been a pretty clear distinction about what constitutes commercial vs. non-commercial publishing. I did a panel with Warner Brothers, and posed the question, ‘What if we put Google Ads or become an Amazon affiliate on our fan fiction site as a way to pay our server and hosting bills?’ And they said, ‘We have no problem with self-funding. What we have is a problem is with people selling things as if they are authorized or created by us or the original author.’'”

The Los Angeles Times posted about another recent legal case on Sherlock Holmes' public domain status which made clear the judge's views. "'The Doyle estate's business strategy is plain: charge a modest license fee for which there is no legal basis, in the hope that the 'rational' writer or publisher asked for the fee will pay it rather than incur a greater cost, in legal expenses, in challenging the legality of the demand. The strategy had worked ... only Klinger (so far as we know) resisted,' Posner wrote in his opinion. 'In effect he was a private attorney general, combating a disreputable business practice — a form of extortion — and he is seeking by the present motion not to obtain a reward but merely to avoid a loss.'"

TIME posted about robots replacing fans at Korean baseball games. "Hanwha’s robot fans will work as stand-ins for human fans who can’t attend a game. Remote fans will be able to control some of the robots’ movements — presumably certain hand gestures in the direction of umpires — and can even upload an image of their face to be shown on the machine’s screen. The robots will also let fans watch the game from afar, giving more fans the opportunity to join in the action and cheer on their team." Whether the robot fans will have the same legal rights as human fans remains to be seen but legal developments are sure to keep evolving!

What tech and legal developments about fandom have caught your attention? Write about them in Fanlore! Contributions are welcome from all fans.

We want your suggestions! If you know of an essay, video, article, podcast, or link you think we should know about, comment on the most recent OTW Fannews post. Links are welcome in all languages! Submitting a link doesn't guarantee that it will be included in a Fannews post, and inclusion of a link doesn't mean that it is endorsed by the OTW.

The story of female volleyball fans in Iran was covered by many sites, including France24. "[T]hese sporting events are only for male eyes, since the 'morality police' — a special police force that seeks to fight 'moral corruption' and to combat those who violate Islamic law — have been systematically preventing women from attending volleyball tournaments since 2005. However, this prohibition does not apply to foreign women." While some women were able to get into games with the aid of foreign fans and by wearing the other team's jerseys, 50 women were arrested for attempting entry. As one woman said, "I don’t want to have to resort to ruses in order to support my team. I want to be able to walk into a sports stadium proud of my identity as an Iranian woman and a fan of my national team."

The Korea Times reported on how Korean fans making subtitles were being sued by U.S. drama producers. "Police are now questioning the 15 who were booked without physical detention. Investigators said they made Korean subtitles of American television dramas and movies without getting prior consent from the original producers and circulated their translations among Internet users through large online cafes. A police officer said on condition of anonymity that U.S. television drama producers tend not to exercise their copyrights if individual citizens violate the law. But, he said, the U.S. producers took legal action against illegal subtitle makers as they believed that the violators circulated their subtitles rapidly through the Internet and as a result the original producers experienced negative fallout on their earnings."

The Telegraph India talked with fans about their World Cup passions and which countries they supported. "Germany’s clinical 7-1 demolition of Brazil not just reignited the clash of continents at the Fifa World Cup but also confirmed that Calcutta has diversified its allegiance. Germany, The Netherlands, Spain, England, France and Italy now evoke equal passion among the city’s football faithful as the traditional Selecao and La Albicileste." Part of this difference is generational and star driven but "[w]hile age is a rough line of division that splits loyalties, it is not a watertight one. Families too apparently help shape who supports whom."

What stories do you have to tell about your local fandoms? Write about them in Fanlore! Contributions are welcome from all fans.

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